


You Got That Super Bass

by drainbamage954 (cats_cradle6766)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cats_cradle6766/pseuds/drainbamage954
Summary: Yifan's new neighbors are extremely loud and this causes more problems than Yifan is entirely prepared for.  And seriously, who has closets?





	

There are certain laws in society that Yifan believes pretty much everyone should understand. They are unspoken rules, not drafted in varying complexities of English (and sometimes Latin) like the judicial conscripts he studies late into the night, but understood as social courtesies that everyone should abide.

Do not intentionally sneeze on someone. It is rude.

When returning from the shower, one should, under no circumstances leave their towel on the floor. It is a horrible habit.

When crossing the street, you should look both ways to ensure that walking into the open road will not result in scarring a child permanently from witnessing vehicular death.

And, most importantly, when residing within a building in which many people also share and live, noise levels should be kept at an appropriate level.

So far, this rule has caused no severe problems with Yifan and his own roommate. And while Yixing sometimes (often) forgets to abide by this rule and will burst into song randomly or frantically practice his guitar at two in the morning, Yifan forgives him. Because, despite his rigidity, Yifan can be a huge pushover, especially when Yixing looks at him like a lost kitten.

However, this rule, one of the most important rules in Yifan’s opinion, is clearly not understood by Yifan’s neighbors. After barely a week into the new semester, Yifan had been home barely thirty minutes after his afternoon politics lecture when he was assaulted by wall shaking sound crashing through the east side of his dorm room. He had stared in pure horrified disbelief as the sound shattered the air around him.

If this is what is considered music these days, Yifan wants to strangle everyone in the music industry for destroying any appropriate concept of sound.

His new neighbors also seem to be in constant competition with the music they insist on blasting at full volume all times of the day, their voices piercing through the wall and into Yifan’s ears like Olympic javelins and setting his teeth on edge. He has no idea how, but it sounds as if they are playing baseball constantly and using their beds as bats for the amount of thumping and bangs that constantly assault his wall.

“You can trade sides with me if you want,” Yixing says one day as Yifan is startled for the seventh time that hour by a series of loud bangs against the wall by his bed.

Yifan raises an eyebrow at Yixing. “Are you serious?”

Yixing smiles brightly, his voice laughing as he says “Of course not!” He smiles in devilish amusement at Yifan’s frown. “Honestly, why don’t you just move you bed away from the wall?”

Yifan mumbles something about feng sui and poor room dimensions before Yixing barks out a laugh, walking from the room, his dimple taunting on his face.

However, after a week of the racket, Yifan is spread so thin he’s pretty sure someone just breathing on him will spur him into a mass serial killing. So it is that he finds himself outside the door of the room neighboring his own and rapping a fist hard against the wood, trying to be heard over the pounding bass on the opposite side of the door. He apparently doesn’t have to worry though, as a second later the door is nearly pulled off its hinges and Yifan is left to stare at a tall gangly boy who has clearly been interrupted in the process of putting on clothing and is smiling with the vast majority of his face.

“HI!” Yifan’s neighbor says loudly and it’s miraculously louder than the music currently making Yifan’s ears ache. “My name’s Chanyeol! What’s yours?”

Yifan just blinks, his eyebrow twitching as Chanyeol holds his hand out, smile creasing his right eye into oblivion. Chanyeol is wearing washed jeans low on his hips and a light gray button down which lays open, revealing a smooth chest. Yifan swallows and his eyes flicker behind Chanyeol’s smile to his room, which looks like a bomb went off and he can see the other roommate standing on one of the beds, singing along loudly to the mess of music and head banging violently.

“I’m Yifan,” Yifan yells, barely hearing himself over the electronic roar. “I live next door.”

Chanyeol looks positively exuberant. “Nice to finally meet you!” Chanyeol explodes in sound as his hand flies out to Yifan’s, previously limp at his side, and shakes it hard enough to throw Yifan off balance. Yifan wonders how many drugs he’s on as his eyes lower inadvertently to Chanyeol’s left clavicle and fixate. “Want to come in?”

“Actually I was wondering if you could turn it down,” Yifan hollers as the autotuned voice shrieks ‘BANGARANG’ at unacceptable volumes. “My walls are shaking.”

Chanyeol immediately looks like he’s just realized he murdered a family of baby rabbits unintentionally. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Chanyeol yells, dropping Yifan’s hand and holding up both hands in apology. “I didn’t know it was so loud through the walls! Wow, I feel horrible.” Behind Chanyeol, his shorter roommate has ceased bodily spasming on the bed to the pounding dubstep and crept up behind Chanyeol with slightly gleaming eyes, an eyebrow cocked curiously.

“Who’s this?” the roommate asks, and his voice is equally as loud as Chanyeol’s over the music. Yifan wonders if they’re both slightly deaf. It might explain the volume.

“Our neighbor, Yifan,” Chanyeol says, turning desperately sad and guilty eyes on the other. “Apparently we’ve been disturbing him, Baekhyun. What with us being so loud. I’m so sorry, I’ll go turn it down.” And Chanyeol bounds away to the depths of the room leaving Yifan to stare at Baekhyun awkwardly as Baekhyun looks him up and down with more calculation than Yifan is comfortable with.

“You’re monstrously tall,” Baekhyun says and the volume of the music drops dramatically, now settling on a dull roar.

_“Done!”_ Chanyeol yells, springing back into view, still half dressed and hair flying everywhere as his smile attempts to consume his face. Despite the absence of ear shattering music, Chanyeol’s voice has not lowered in volume. At all. “Sorry again. We’ll try to be more quiet from now on. Would you like some Pringles?”

Yifan’s eye twitches as he watches Chanyeol fidget and Baekhyun survey the two tall men with a quirked mouth. “No” Yifan’s mouth finally manages as his eyes threaten to travel down Chanyeol’s exposed chest again and presses his lips together. “Just, try to keep the noise level not cancerous,” he adds, tripping over his feet as he makes back to his room and his face burns as the words come out of his mouth.

Cancerous? What the actual shitting fuck.

“Well don’t you look thoroughly removed from gravity,” Yixing says as Yifan nearly breaks the doorknob in his haste to barricade the room against life in general. “Care to share with the class the cause of your excessive forehead wrinkles?”

Yifan’s hand automatically flies to rub at his forehead in agitation, smoothing the non-existent lines there. “I just met our noise obsessed neighbors,” Yifan responds flatly, turning to sit heavily in his rolling desk chair.

Yixing’s face lights up as he shuffles to sit at the edge of his bed, clear interest directed at Yifan. “What are they like?” he asks, curiosity evident on his voice.

“Loud,” Yifan spits out before shoving his face into a British politics book and refusing to answer any more of Yixing’s pointlessly prying questions, even when the other chucks Yifan’s UNESCO stress ball at the taller’s head.

Yifan realizes not telling Yixing about their neighbors was probably unwise, seeing as it would only incite the insistent urge in his roommate to meet the loud people himself and thus bring even more disaster onto Yifan’s currently crumbling state of normalcy. His mistake is fully realized when he emerges from the bathroom he and Yixing managed to snag with their room (upperclassmen status has it’s perks) in just a towel, a hand running through his hair distractedly before he freezes as the image of Yixing in mid conversation with Baekhyun and Chanyeol. All three young men jerk to look at him and Yifan’s brain flies into high alert.

Yifan rationalizes that it was his primitive animalistic fight or flight instinct that made him dash into his closet and slam the door closed, pressing his still wet back to the wood and breathing as if he’d just completed a marathon in the darkness. What the hell?

“Yifan?” Yixing’s voice floats though the door, sounding tentative and tinged with laughter. “Are you okay, buddy?”

“Fine!” Yifan’s voice actually cracks as it jumps an octave and he punches his sweaters. It’s extremely unsatisfying. What the hell are Baekhyun and Chanyeol doing in his goddamn room? What the hell is Yixing thinking inviting them over? Since when were they social people? “You?”

“I’m awesome,” Yixing calls, and he’s definitely holding back laughter. “Just chatting with our neighbors. You remember Baekhyun and Chanyeol, yeah?”

How could I not remember them? Yifan wants to snap back, instead scrunching his face in agitation and letting his eyes slip closed. He reaches out blindly in the near pitch blackness, trying to find something he can put on besides a fucking towel. “Yeah,” he calls, dragging something from a hanger and realizing in dismay it’s a vest. He throws it to the ground and bites back a growl. “Hi, guys.” He winces because, well, he’s holding a conversation from a closet and this is the most awkward and embarrassed he’s ever been in all of his life.

“Hi,” Baekhyun’s clear voice calls before Chanyeol repeats the word, his deeper voice ringing clear and loud through the air and sounding happier than Yifan has ever felt.

“You planning on coming out of the closet any time soon?” Yixing calls and Yifan freezes, hands half way determining if what he is holding are pants or swimming trunks and scowls at the darkness. He doesn’t need to listen to hear the double meaning in Yixing’s question. And he hates Yixing a lot.

“You’re funny,” Yifan calls, and winces again because he hears Baekhyun bark out a laugh as Chanyeol’s voice booms in humor. God those two are like miniature cannons.

“We can wait,” Yixing calls and his voice is jeering. “I’m sure I can entertain Baekhyun and Chanyeol on my own while you spend some time mulling things over in there.”

“Do you play the guitar?” Yifan hears Baekhyun ask with interest and can picture Yixing’s immediate delight at the question. A few seconds later the familiar sound of his roommate babbling about his guitar as he absently plucks chords floats through the door and Yifan goes back to trying to find something to wear. He jumps a moment later at the soft knock on his door and nearly falls into his clothing rack in shock when the door knob rattles.

Somewhere between trying to find something to wear and maneuver in a dark closet, Yifan has lost his towel. And that’s extremely bad.

“Yifan?” Chanyeol’s voice says outside and Yifan blinks because it’s about seven levels softer than he’s ever heard it. “Are you sure you’re okay? Baekhyun and I can leave if you're really that uncomfortable with us being here.”

Yifan looks at the door, blinking rapidly and clutching what he hopes is a sweatshirt to his chest. He makes a sort of strangled sound rather than words and hates articulation.

There is a shuffling outside the door and the light filtering in through the gap between the door and floor flickers. Yifan hastily drags the sweatshirt over his head, feeling his hair go in literally every direction possible before fumbling for something resembling pants. “Yifan?” Chanyeol’s voice says again just as Yifan has finally located what he thinks are pants and nearly falls over as he tries to drag them on in the significantly limited space of his closet.

“I’m fantastic!” Yifan cracks again and feels panic at how his voice seems to be revisiting puberty. Yifan can feel his cool calm strategic exterior crumbling and it’s horrible and embarrassing and he just wants to escape.

“I’ll go get Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says and Yifan can hear him move away. “We’ll leave in a second so you can, um, come out of the closet and stuff.” Yifan pauses and looks at the outline of the door in horror because Chanyeol’s voice was definitely drenched in amusement and he can hear him suddenly snort though his nose. “Sorry!” Chanyeol says, and guffaws. A second later Yixing is suddenly slamming music out of his guitar and he and Baekhyun start belting Travie McCoy’s ‘Billionaire’ at the top of their lungs and Yifan actually does hit a wall.

Apparently they have thoroughly distracted Chanyeol though, as a second later Chanyeol’s voice booms out to the English rap and Yifan is allowed enough space to stop his internal mental collapse and finally finish pulling on pants. He emerges from the closet a moment later and is met with the sight of Baekhyun belting out pop music, standing legs wide on his bed while Chanyeol beatboxes and Yixing is grinning wider than Yifan has ever thought possible.

Looking down at himself, Yifan wonders how, of all the things he grabbed from his closet, he managed to get the bright yellow leggings Minseok had bought him as a gag gift and the violently purple sweatshirt he bought that one weekend when Lu Han had accidentally set his previous one on fire. They had been stranded and the only store in a 20 mile radius was a sketchy souveneir shop that smelled like cats. Yixing turns to look at him and nearly drops his guitar, bursting out into laughter a moment later and causing both Baekhyun and Chanyeol to turn to him and stare. Well, Chanyeol stares. Baekhyun falls onto Yifan’s bed after a moment and laughs like a madman.

Yifan locks himself in his closet again and just falls into the clothing rack.

A week later, as Yifan is pushing his glasses up his face for the twentieth time as he reads The Economist, Yixing declares from his bed “Baekhyun has really amazing thighs” and Yifan slowly raises his head to look at his roommate.

Yixing is staring listlessly at the ceiling, splayed out as he smiles faintly. He turns his head to look at Yifan. “Do you think he’s a dicks or chicks kind of dude?” Yifan just stares at him for a long moment before Yixing seems to give up on ever getting an answer and turns back to the ceiling. “I wonder if he likes drive in movies.”

“You don’t own a car,” Yifan points out, still staring at Yixing as the other turns to look at him and smiles.

“I know,” Yixing says brightly and Yifan, not for the first time, has no idea how to interpret his roommate.

That weekend, Yixing bounds in with enough joy to save every endangered species and Yifan learns that Baekhyun is indeed into dicks and not chicks and that Yixing has successful passed the first stage of courtship in that he and Baekhyun have decided to go on a second date.

The two of them dating is like watching a perpetual train wreck covered in glitter and holographic images. Yixing with his inability to function like a normal person, coupled with Baekhyun’s loud adorable scathing commentary and intelligence, makes Yifan wonder why anyone has hope for the human race. Their dating also results in Yifan running into Chanyeol all over the dorm, despite Yifan’s very conscious efforts to avoid the other boy.

And, to make things even more fantastic, ever time Yifan randomly encounters Chanyeol. Chanyeol looks as if he’s slightly lost, a listlessness in his eyes that has something drilling uncomfortably into Yifan’s sixth rib. After the third day when Yifan nearly collides with Chanyeol as the other almost falls down the stairs holding what is probably every item of clothing he has, he finds himself speaking and blames it on a minor aneurism.

“You know, it would probably be easier if you used a laundry basket,” Yifan says, watching as Chanyeol’s hands try to hold a mountain of clothing and he trails socks all over the basement floor.

Chanyeol’s voice is loud as he laughs, echoing around the laundry room and making Yifan’s eye twitch. “That’s what Baekhyun keeps telling me,” he says, flashing a grin at Yifan from over his armful of fabrics. “I just keep forgetting.”

Yifan hms through his nose, dragging his own load of whites from the dryer and watching from the corner of his eye as Chanyeol proceeds to pack all of his items into the washing machine. The washing machine looks like it may be sick.

“You should separate your whites from your darks,” Yifan says idly, folding socks and boxers as Chanyeol jerks around to look at him. “Otherwise the colors may bleed. They’ll wash better too.”

“They’re just clothes,” Chanyeol says and Yifan stares at him. Then he considers some of the things he’s seen Chanyeol wearing, including the Native American-esque wolf emblazoned shirt and shakes himself. “I just want to make sure they don’t smell like death.”

“Why would they smell like death?” Yifan raises an eyebrow higher.

“Who knows, why does anything smell like death?”

Yifan has to admit Chanyeol has him there. He doesn't entirely know how, but he slowly begins to start seeing more and more of Chanyeol, the other dropping by his room nearly every day, smiling broadly and holding up a different variety of snacks or munching on a banana happily before he interrupts whatever important thing Yifan has been working on and showing Yifan this new youtube video he found with singing monkeys. And Yifan never really says no, never really turns him away, and after three weeks with Yixing randomly going missing and Chanyeol examining everything he owns with childlike wonder, Yifan finds that he’s actually gotten a little used to the constant ear splitting volume that Chanyeol seems to be stuck on.

And his mouth has developed a very strange twitch he can’t quite explain.

Yifan answers his door on a Thursday evening expecting to have a package of chocolate crispy things shoved into his face by a very smiley Chanyeol. He is thus surprised when he is instead greeted with Chanyeol, dripping wet and wearing only a towel, which is haphazardly tied around his waist, and grinning sheepishly as he drags large fingers through his hair.

Yifan notices that Chanyeol has a lot of skin on his body.

“Hey,” Chanyeol says and grins in apology for something Yifan isn’t even sure he’s guilty of. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Yifan blinks. “I live here,” he points out and Chanyeol laughs entirely unnecessarily. “Why are you in a towel?”

“Baekhyun locked me out,” Chanyeol says and shifts his weight in his shower shoes, dripping and water is still sliding down his chest and he looks cold. It thus makes no sense as to why Yifan is feeling goose bumps rising on his skin then. “Can I come and chill not in blatant public and mostly naked?”

Yifan swallows heavily as that familiar thing drills painfully into his ribs and attempts to puncture his lungs. “Yeah,” he says as he brain screams in opposition. He shrugs and steps aside. “I guess that’s cool.”

“Jesus, Oh Lord, thank you,” Chanyeol says in a rush as he pushes past Yifan into the safety of the room, shoulder gliding against Yifan’s and the other stills slightly at the contact. There’s a lot of static in his head. Chanyeol immediately shuffles and plops onto Yifan’s bed, flopping backwards, letting out a dramatic sigh.

Yifan’s lips purse as the obviously wet towel and wet hair and wet Chanyeol press into his duvet. But he doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t really want to see Chanyeol get up and potentially break something. Again. “So, Baekhyun forgot you were in the shower before leaving?” Yifan asks after trying to clear his throat about five times.

“More like he forgot about me and my door is locked and I’m pretty sure he’s still in there actually but-“ Chanyeol trails off as his eyes wander over to Yixing’s side of the room and he swallows thickly.

Yifan holds up a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose with the other. “Say no more,” he tells the other on his bed and stands for a while, wondering what to do now that he has a mostly naked Chanyeol on his bed and no idea where he should stick his hands. His mind, unbidden, flashes a few very inappropriate places he could shove them before he gags and colors.

This is a problem Yifan has been having with obnoxiously increasing frequency. Every time Chanyeol comes over to hang out, and many times when he’s not even near Yifan at all, the Pre-Law student is plagued with random flashing images of himself and the other in various contexts and degrees of compromising limb placement. This usually results in Yifan gulping down air and wiping sweaty palms on his jeans as inconspicuously as possible.

Yifan firmly tells himself over and over that he is not attracted to Chanyeol, regardless of how his eyes will occasionally trail down Chanyeol’s neck or linger a moment too long on his widely smiling mouth as he fights the urge to either drag his fingers across Chanyeol’s jaw or force a muzzle against his face to cease the near constant assault of sound that is Park Chanyeol.

He is not attracted to Park Chanyeol. He just has an unfortunate case of perpetual indigestion.

Yifan realizes a second too late that Chanyeol has said something. “What?”

Chanyeol snorts loudly to the ceiling before flapping his arms slightly on the bed. “Can I borrow some clothes? I swear I’ll wash them. I’m just kinda mostly lots of naked and, as awesome as being naked is, I’d be able to do more if I was wearing pants.”

Yifan opens and closes his mouth a few times before turning and walking to his closet, yanking the door open and trying to find something to give Chanyeol so there will be less skin constantly assaulting his eyes. As Yifan frowns at his many pairs of pants, he hears Chanyeol get up and shuffle around his room, beat boxing absently under his breath and a moment later music is floating around the room from Yifan’s laptop. Yifan can hear Chanyeol tinkering with his various possessions, and does his best to ignore him and instead picks out a shirt.

_If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go_   
_I could take you places you ain’t never been before_   
_Baby take a chance of you’ll never ever know_

Yifan’s face falls and he nearly drops the clothing he’s been looking at. “Really Chanyeol? Really? You’re playing Bieber?” he asks, half turning.

_“Swag! Swag Swag!”_ Chanyeol yells to the music, making violently abrasive gangster motions with his arms as he dances like a high giraffe around Yifan’s desk to the rhythmic bass. Yifan’s eye twitches violently and he jerks to look back at the garments in his hands. Good enough.

“Here,” Yifan says, trying not to look at Chanyeol as the other continues to sway around the room, occasionally pop-locking (or having seizures, it's hard to tell) as he makes a very intense face. “Put these on.”

“If I was your boyfriend,” Chanyeol sings, spinning to face Yifan and swaying dangerously, pointing to Yifan as his mouth quirks. Yifan feels most of the blood in his upper body freeze. “I’d never let you go. I’d keep you on my arm girl, you’d never be alone.” There is a very loud buzzing sound in Yifan’s ears as Chanyeol rocks his hips and shoulders to the music and continues to sing in a voice that is significantly lower than Justin Bieber’s. “And I can be a gentleman, anything you want. If I was you boyfriend, I’d never let you go.”

Yifan malfunctions. There’s no other word for it. No other proper explanation for him dropping his extra clothes, grabbing Chanyeol’s pointing hand and yanking forward, his free hand grabbing the back of Chanyeol’s head and smashing his mouth to a startled gurgle that he swallows greedily.

Chanyeol tastes like he sounds. Loud. It is not so much a taste as an energy, a spark that shoots through Yifan almost painfully as the startled gurgle Chanyeol had initially released extends into a much more interesting sound. His mouth presses back against Yifan’s and Chanyeol’s skin is still slightly wet and his hair drips onto Yifan’s fingers as that drilling sensation in his chest is now pulling out, threatening to crack his ribs as something bubbles dangerously just above is diaphragm.

Justin Bieber sings about being a potential romantic engagement in the background.

Yifan pulls away after a moment, looking at Chanyeol, who blinks slowly at him, large eyes shining slightly and the reality train broadsides Yifan painfully. The fact registers that he just very much kissed Park Chanyeol and has Yifan flashing down to snatch the clothes he dropped, shoving them into a very shocked Chanyeol’s chest, and promptly shoving Chanyeol as frantically as he can into Yixing’s open closet yelling _“There! Clothing! Haha!”_ and slamming the door shut, breaking heavily.

Well, that wasn’t unintentional or anything.

Though, now he’s had a split second to rationalize, it certainly was enjoyable. Maybe when Chanyeol has more clothes on…

Yifan stops his mind with a wide-eyed frown before it can progress further. He’s being entirely impractical.

There is silence inside Yixing’s closet and Yifan doesn’t notice it until he’s quieted the pounding in his ears. He swallows, looking at the dark wood of the door and realizing that shoving Chanyeol into a closet immediately after kissing him probably wasn’t a wise idea. He licks his lips, stepping back slightly. A moment later there is a light knock on the other side of the closet door.

“Um,” Chanyeol’s voice says, and the deep tone is hesitant and muffled. “Can I come out of the closet now?”

Yifan thinks about all the ways that statement can be interpreted. “Are we both out of the closet? I never really- I don’t- my parents want me to be a lawyer.”

Good job, Yifan. You’re a raging failure.

There’s a pause from the closet before Yifan can hear Chanyeol shifting. “Well, I already came out once. I just never figured that I’d have to do it both figuratively and literally in one go.”

Yifan resists smacking his head against the door and instead steps away, waiting before the knob turns and Chanyeol reappears, looking more self conscious than Yifan has ever seen him. And something about that hurts. He is also wearing Yifan’s clothing, which is still slightly big on him and makes Yifan’s stomach do strange things.

“So,” Chanyeol says, his arms swinging in agitation at his side as he looks at Yifan. “Your mouth and my mouth kinda…” he trails off and makes a very strange hand gesture and Yifan is babbling before he can stop himself.

“I’m sorry,” Yifan blurts out and feels heat creep over his cheekbones uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to- I just- and you were- and it’s whatever so yeah I’m sorry.”

Chanyeol is looking at him with an expression Yifan would like to describe as sadly confused digestive troubles before he’s looking away and laughing far too artificially for Yifan’s liking and edging quickly towards the door. “No!” he says and laughs insanely again. “I’m sorry. That was weird. Who sings Justin Bieber? Who has closets? I’m sorry, my face is confusing and thanks for the clothing and I’ll just, um, yeah.” He flashes a very very unconvincing smile at Yifan, his eyes glistening with something Yifan doesn’t really catch before he’s scampering out of Yifan’s room and down the hall and Yifan is left rooted to the floor and trying to internalize what just happened.

When Yixing shows up two hours later, he finds Yifan seated at his desk chair, repeated hitting his head against his desk because he realized about 6.82 minutes after Chanyeol had fled that, from Chanyeol’s point of view, Yifan had shoved Chanyeol into a closet after kissing him and then apologized and, for all intents and purposes, told him it was a complete mistake.

And judging from Chanyeol’s severely wounded expression, Chanyeol hadn’t really considered it a mistake.

“Did you fail a test?” Yixing asks, raising an eyebrow into extremely mussed hair as his collar sticks up in a very suggestive manner as to where he’s been for the last few hours.

“I failed life,” Yifan grumbles to his desk before letting his head drop to it again.

Yifan doesn't realize how much Chanyeol has invaded his life until Chanyeol is gone and then there is a gaping Chanyeol sized hole in Yifan’s day to day life. This results in Yifan spending most of his time brooding into his school work and developing a nervous twitch anytime someone walks past the open door to his and Yixing’s room.

“I feel weird with the door open all the time,” Yixing comments two days into this new trend as he absently plucks at his guitar. “It’s like you’re actually welcoming social contact.”

“Go make out with Baekhyun,” Yifan mumbles at him, scowling as he tries to focus on the policies concerning the Japanese American Treaty following the Second World War, twitching as Sehun races past his door giggling uncontrollably.

“Not a bad idea,” Yixing says, standing and smirking. “Why don’t you try to find him?”

“Find who?” Yifan mumbles, though his face heats. He hates his shame.

Yixing snorts. “Chanyeol, who else?” Yixing shoots back at him. “I mean, you did initiate make outs and then shove him in a closet. What is he supposed to think? You lead a really messed up sex life?” Yifan just glares at Yixing as the other continues to smirk. “I’ll go make out with Baekhyun,” Yixing says, and flounces from the room.

It gets, if anything worse.

Chanyeol has somehow mastered the art of being a ninja, sneaking and hiding from Yifan at every possible opportunity and it’s beginning to irritate Yifan exponentially. Yixing tells Yifan one afternoon apparently Baekhyun has even become concerned, and Baekhyun apparently never really gets genuinely concerned about anything aside from eyeliner.

Yifan also gets worse. He actually makes significant effort to try to find Chanyeol, one day actually sitting in what was once the Baekhyun-Chanyeol disaster zone before Yixing had come in and worked his magic cleaning charm for almost seven hours and memorizing the patterns on Chanyeol’s bedspread.

Chanyeol never showed up. Apparently he still does come back to sleep on rare occasion, because otherwise Baekhyun would have called a search party, but he is blatantly avoiding Yifan and Yifan, despite his serious façade of pre-law soullessness, broods enough to garner the attention of both Baekhyun and Yixing. In an effort to alleviate some of Yifan’s constant morbidity, they start playing him Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson at all times of the day. Yifan can even hear it loudly through the walls as Baekhyun blasts it in his own room.

“Cheer up,” Yixing says one afternoon. “It could be worse.”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun adds as he lazily threads fingers through Yixing’s hair, the other stretched out on his bed, head in Baekhyun’s lap. “Chanyeol could have been singing Katy Perry instead of Bieber.”

“You two are incredibly useless,” Yifan says, glaring at the couple as they shrug in synchronization.

“You’re not trying hard enough,” Baekhyun says idly as Yixing makes a soft contented sound from his lap. “Look at it this way. To you, you’re experiencing minor brain failure and constant heartburn. Multiply that by 32 and you’ve got Chanyeol’s current emotional stability.” He tugs gently at Yixing’s hair, earning a snuffling sound from his boyfriend. “Chanyeol isn’t a books and facts person like you. He’s a feeling everything and judge with emotions person. It’s why he’s a childhood education major and not an aspiring philosopher.”

“So I should dress up like a Disney Prince and take him on a magic carpet ride?” Yifan drawls, raising an eyebrow at Baekhyun.

Baekhyun shrugs. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

Yifan resists the urge to beat his head against his foreign policy assignment. Though it’s a close call.

It’s almost been two weeks, two horrible agonizing weeks, when Yifan gets back from a lecture and has barely had time to set down his book bag before Nicki Minaj is suddenly blasting from the other side of the wall by his bed. He looks at his wall in wonder for a moment, taking in the significance of this event, before he’s bolting from his room and rapping on the door he’s now memorized from staring at for hours.

It’s like déjà vu but with a shit ton more feelings when Chanyeol wrenches open the door with enough force to rip it off the frame. Yifan barely has time to open his mouth before Chanyeol goes deadly pale, lets out an extremely strangled sound, and slams the door in Yifan’s face.

Under the still blaring sound of _Beating like a drum and it's comin' your way! Can't you hear that BOOM BA BOOM BOOM BOOM BA BOOM BOOM BASS!_ Yifan can hear frantic voices and banging, something hitting another thing, a yell, and then the door is opening again to reveal a very flustered and agitated looking Baekhyun. Baekhyun takes one look at Yifan, frowns, and then says “I have to go fuck Yixing.”

Yifan feels his face crumple in response. “Too much information, dude,” he says and Baekhyun shrugs.

“Just letting you know you’re exiled for a while,” Baekhyun points out and pushes past Yifan, wandering into Yifan’s room and Yifan turns back to the oddly empty room before him. Nicki Minaj is still screaming confusing English and Yifan wonders how someone of Chanyeol’s size can disappear so effectively in such a short period of time.

Yifan takes a tentative step into the room, looking around and eliminating possible hiding places for Chanyeol to be, even going so far as to crouch down slightly and check under the beds where Chanyeol is distinctly absent, before he straightens up and frowns.

Then the closet sneezes and Yifan jerks to look at it and wants to hit himself for being so oblivious.

Walking up to it tentatively, Yifan leans in to the door, listening. It’s silent. Yifan tries to open the door and the handle gives for a fraction of a second before it is suddenly pulled shut with surprising force.

“Oh for the love of-“ Yifan snaps out and pauses a second before trying to wrench the door open again. He gets the thing open maybe an inch before it is pulled back and he hears a loud grunt from inside the closet.

“Chanyeol, would you please come out of the closet?” Yifan asks, feeling exasperated.

“I already came out of the closet,” Chanyeol snaps back at him and his voice is pouting. “Figuratively and literally and then figurative and literally at the same time!”

“Just get out here,” Yifan sighs, staring at the door and wishing he was looking at Chanyeol instead.

“No,” Chanyeol defies.

“Please?” Yifan asks and there is silence on the other side of the door. Yifan waits with bated breath for a moment before looking down and suddenly wrenching the door open. It opens this time, bringing with it a startled and exclaiming Chanyeol who knocks into Yifan and they both tumble to the ground with a lot of long limbs and grunts.

“Hi,” Yifan says, looking up at Chanyeol, currently lying on top of him and winces as he feels something dig into his back. God he missed Chanyeol.

Chanyeol looks mortified. “Hey! I’m lying on you, and touching you, and I’ll just get off now, I’m sorry, oh Jesus-“

Yifan shuts up Chanyeol’s babbling and stills his awkwardly flailing limbs as he tries to push away in the most effective means he can think of. He reaches up and pulls Chanyeol to him, leaning up and swallowing whatever nonsense Chanyeol has planned to spew at him between his lips. Yifan doesn't pull away for a long time, going so far as to deliver a soft nip to Chanyeol’s lower lip before finally pulling back and just looking up at Chanyeol.

At this ridiculously loud and expressive excuse for a human who managed to completely destroy Yifan’s sensible routine and Yifan wouldn’t have it any other way. He grins up at Chanyeol’s slightly dazed expression. “If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go,” he murmurs, lips still close enough that they ghost over Chanyeol’s.

Chanyeol blinks at him, eyes wide. “Really?” he asks and Yifan smiles.

“Pretty much,” Yifan answers, and wraps his arms a little tighter around Chanyeol. “Except, you know, when you had to take a shit or something.”

Normal people would have looked at Yifan like he was experiencing brain trauma for delivering a comment like that. Chanyeol looks at Yifan like he’s made of rainbows for delivering a comment like that.

“Deal,” Chanyeol chirps, a smile stretching over his face as his right eye twitches smaller than the left and Yifan feels so horribly happy it’s mostly ridiculous.

But really, just like Yifan became used to Chanyeol’s inability to keep his volume to anything less than relative shouting, he could get used to this too. And more importantly, he wants to.


End file.
